a squadron of battleships and destroyers, came on
straight at the strongly intrenched Turks. The first of the
Australians to reach the shore were the Third Brigade under Colonel
Sinclair Maglagan. With a rush they charged the first Turkish lines,
bayoneted the defenders, and scrambled up the steep cliffs that rise a
hundred feet in the air.

Fortunately for the British troops, as these and subsequent events
proved, there had been a slight miscalculation in the landing, and the
men had actually gone ashore a mile and a half northeast of Gaba Tepe,
instead of at that point. Gaba Tepe is so rugged and uninviting that
it was believed that the Turks would not trouble to intrench it.
Actually the Turks appeared to have intrenched and prepared every inch
of the coast. But at Sari Bair, where the Australian and New Zealand
troops actually landed, the character of the ground, although not so
advantageous at first, afforded much more protection once the men were
ashore. Sir Ian Hamilton, in his graphic account of the operations,
subsequently said:

"Owing to the tows having failed to maintain their exact direction,
the actual point of disembarkation was rather more than a mile north
of that which I had selected, and was more closely overhung by steeper
cliffs. Although this accident increased the initial difficulty of
driving the enemy off the heights inland, it has since proved itself
to have been a blessing in disguise, inasmuch as the actual base of
the force of occupation had been much better defiladed from shell
fire.

"The beach on which the landing was actually effected is a very narrow
strip of sand about 1,000 yards in length, bounded on the north and
the south by two small promontories. At its southern extremity, a
deep ravine with exceedingly deep, scrub-clad sides, runs inland in a
northeasterly direction. Near the northern end of the beach a small
but steep gully runs up into the hills at right angles to the shore.
Between the ravine and the gully the whole of the beach is baked by
the seaward face of the spur which forms the northwestern side of the
ravine. From the top of the spur the ground falls almost sheer, except
near the southern limit of the beach where gentler slopes give access
to the mouth of the ravine behind. Farther inland lie in a tangled
knot the under-features of Sari Bair separated by deep ravines which
take a most confusing diversity of direction. Sharp spurs, covered
with dense scrub and fall